Huh. I’m not terribly surprised - Bob Chapek’s leadership has been “less than ideal” from many different angles (political skirmishes, scattershot Marvel Phase 4, Disney+ still being unprofitable, theme park cost increases). Still surprising that something happened about it.

However, maybe it isn’t. The stock is down 40% YTD, 10% over the last 5 years. Pretty mediocre. Not that it’s been a great year for any stock, but losing 2/5ths value is still an outlier.

It’s not hard to see why. A $1.5 billion operating loss in the streaming division last quarter, despite 164M subscribers, is a major black eye. With $5.96/mo. being the average worth of a user, that means approximately $977 million monthly in streaming revenue, or $2.93 Billion per quarter - yet Disney is somehow spending $4.43 Billion per quarter to keep the streaming subscription ship afloat. If I’m an investor, I’m skeptical that Disney+ will ever obtain profitability. Raise prices, lose subscriptions. Make original content to keep people subscribed - but it costs money to make, eats profitability, and so far hasn’t been a huge subscription-saver. Thus the ad-based tier upcoming to try to fix the hole…